You may be asking yourself, “What EXACTLY is academic integrity?” Today is an introduction to our Academic Integrity Series and we share 3 easy tips to ensure academic integrity.
Before we break down the 3 easy tips to ensure and help you maintain academic integrity, let’s break down what it is and WHY it’s so important.
Academic means relating to education and integrity is a quality of being honest in all you do. Hence, academic integrity is being honest in all of your academic pursuits.
What does that mean? Let’s look at it this way: do you expect people to be honest with you when dealing with them? It’s kind of like that. The whole credo of “Do unto others as you would like done unto you” stands. If you wouldn’t want someone to steal credit from you, the same courtesy should be given back.
To better understand the basic principles of academic integrity, let’s discuss 3 easy tips to ensure you have academic integrity:
1. Avoid plagiarism
If you are paraphrasing someone else’s words or ideas, you need to give them credit by citing the work you used in your paper. This also means that you shouldn’t just “copy and paste” things directly from another source, trying to pass it off as your own. Any time you use another person’s words, you MUST give them credit otherwise you will be found plagiarizing. If you are ever in doubt about whether what you have found is plagiarism versus common knowledge, be sure to give credit.
2. Don’t cheat
This means don’t share your work with others or allow them to take your work. While you might think you are helping a friend out by letting them copy your work, in the long run, that actually hurts them. If you are both caught sharing your work, then you will both fail the assignment. It’s important that every student uses their own ideas and completes their own work to ensure academic integrity. Another form of cheating is using outside sources while taking a test. Unless your teacher has given you specific instructions that the test is open source, you shouldn’t be using outside sources when completing a test. What do I mean by “outside sources?” A good example would be using handwritten or typed notes, referring to online sources such as Brainly or Quizlet, or using a calculator when not permitted. The purpose of a test is to check YOUR UNDERSTANDING, not your ability to look up answers. To ensure academic integrity, the answers submitted on tests need to be your own.
3. Use reliable sources
Always check your sources before submitting a paper. There are so many unreliable sources that provide false information, especially on the web. Websites like Wikipedia allow users to edit and add information, so it is generally not considered a reliable source for research. Not only is it important to verify your source so that you do not accidentally provide false information, but you also want to make sure you are never intentionally falsifying information to mislead your teachers or peers. This might include things like lying about data findings on a science lab, or fabricating fake dreams for a dream study in a psychology class. This is dishonest and should be avoided at all costs.
At the heart of academic integrity is the concept that you must be honest and complete your own work, avoiding plagiarism at all costs since it is a serious academic violation with consequences.
Over the coming weeks, we will break down academic integrity a bit more, discussing topics such as avoiding plagiarism, cheating, and other violations of academic integrity.
Join us for this journey and you will become a pro on avoiding plagiarism and maintaining academic integrity!
Anjilee & Sara
Other posts in this series: